My Stress

It’s becoming alarmingly apparent that I stress myself out too much.

I was working at the coffee shop today. I was making drinks like I usually do. Pulling shots of espresso, mixing in syrups for the coffees, and stirring the liquids together. I just started last month and it’s my ninth shift there. I can’t help but be anxious to get to my coworker’s level and make them help me out. Feeling useless is such a painful feeling, and I’m too familiar with it.

Usually easy stuff like making a brewed coffee or just pulling shots were becoming too difficult. Every time I would see my coworker steam milk to make a hot drink it reminded me of how much longer I had to go. And it was really bothering me. I just stood there and watched him finish everything, knowing that I had the general understanding of how it worked down, but I couldn’t use my knowledge to practice.

This feeling continued to eat at me all day. I started mislabeling drinks because I kept thinking of how much I needed to know. I accidentally had an attitude with a customer. I wasn’t trying to sound mean to them at all, I swear. I just was confused on what they asked because I thought I made it the way that they ordered it. I got called to the manager’s office and he talked to me about it. I told him that I truly didn’t mean it, and I didn’t. I wouldn’t raise my voice or get short with a customer because he didn’t do anything wrong. There wasn’t anything wrong with the drink itself, just a misunderstanding of how much caffeine he wanted. My manager knew that I wouldn’t get short with a customer and just wanted to know what was going on in my head. Another mistake, Josh. Stop it!

My point being is that I stress myself too much on trivial things. It’s a bad habit I developed in order to motivate myself to do more. But being motivated doesn’t mean anything if you are regressing instead of progressing. And this just isn’t at my coffee shop job, it’s also at home and with friends. I stress about getting things that are important to me done so badly that I have tunnel vision and become unintentionally inconsiderate to others and their situations. I don’t know why I started doing this or where it came from. Maybe it’s because I want to prove to everyone that I can do it, too. But I don’t know when my “pride” became so powerful to the point where it would negatively affect something I wanted to improve.

And what’s worse is that due to how much I have been stressing myself out lately, I have been feeling more exhausted easier. A simple 6 hour shift that was only busy 2 hours into the beginning left me almost completely fatigued. I had to recharge by writing once I got home. I have so much ambition, but that means nothing if I don’t have the energy to do so. What’s wrong with me? Why do I stress myself out so? Is this what my vision of “success” looks like? Because I don’t want it to be that way.

Anyways, I just had to write this to get this feeling off of me. Hopefully I can take a chill pill. As my coworker, Farhan, said to me, everyone goes at their own pace. If I rush it, I’ll ruin my rhythm and have to restart from the beginning. And trust me, I ruined my rhythm about 30 times today. I will try and take more deep breaths and calm myself down. This job should be fun. I made my New Year’s Resolution complete, which is quit McDonald’s. I don’t have to worry about going into work and having to overwork myself because my coworker’s at McDonald’s won’t always pull their weight.

Maybe that’s what it is. I guess that feeling of working at McDonald’s is carrying over to my perspective of all of my jobs. That need of urgency and quick mastery is just getting to me now. And it makes sense. I’ve worked at McDonald’s since I left high school and here I am, two and a half years later. That job was my only strong source of income, and I knew that I hated it there. Horrible working conditions, bad management, sloppy scheduling, and extremely rare good coworkers that were with me long enough. I still worry about everyone that I left there, as they still got to move on without me. I hope that their lives won’t be too bad, but unfortunately, since I’m gone, it already is. But they’ll re-acclimate themselves, just as I need to re-acclimate myself.

Thanks for letting me talk. I am happy that I have writing. I can convey the emotions that I’m feeling once I can see them in front of me. I feel better now, and I’ll just have to reread this post before I start work tomorrow.

Enjoy the rest of your night, everyone.

-J.E.